How to turn a PowerPoint into a video (with narration)

A slide deck is built to sit behind a speaker. Turn it into a video without that speaker and you usually get a slideshow with long silences, or a voiceover that reads the bullets aloud. Neither is much fun to watch.

So before picking a method, decide which video you want. One is a recording of your presentation, slides and all. The other is an explanation of what the deck says, which can look nothing like the slides. PowerPoint itself is good at the first. Generators are good at the second.

Option 1: PowerPoint's built-in video export

PowerPoint can save a deck as an MP4 on its own, and most people never notice the menu. On Windows, it's File > Export > Create a Video. On a Mac, File > Export, then pick MP4 or MOV as the file format.

To get narration into it, record first. Go to Slide Show > Record (called Record Slide Show in some versions), and PowerPoint captures your voice slide by slide, along with how long you stayed on each one. You can turn on your webcam and draw on slides with the pen while you talk. When you export, choose "Use Recorded Timings and Narrations" and every slide plays for as long as you spoke over it.

If you skip recording, you can set a fixed number of seconds per slide instead. That gives you a silent slideshow, which works fine for a looping lobby screen and poorly for anything else.

What it's good at:

It's free and already installed.
Animations, transitions and embedded media come through, because PowerPoint is replaying the deck itself.
It's your voice, so it sounds like you.

What it's bad at:

You have to record the narration, and one stumble on slide 14 means re-recording that slide. Recording is per slide, so the fix is less painful than redoing the whole thing.
The video is still your slides. If the deck was text-heavy bullet points written to support a live talk, the video will be too.
Pacing is whatever you managed on the day. Most recorded decks drag.

Option 2: Screen record yourself presenting

The other manual route: open the deck in presenter mode, start a screen recorder (OBS, QuickTime on a Mac, the Xbox Game Bar or Snipping Tool on Windows, or Loom), and give the talk. This is how a lot of course and conference videos get made.

It's flexible. You can switch to a live demo or a browser mid-talk, which the built-in export can't do. The cost is that it's one long take. A mistake means editing it out afterwards or starting again, and you need some kind of video editor to trim the start and end at minimum.

Make either manual route watchable

The tools are fine. Most bad slide videos come from the script, and these habits help whichever route you pick:

Write the narration out before recording, even roughly. Speaker notes are a good place for it.
Budget about 150 words per minute of narration. A ten-minute talk is roughly 1,500 words. If your script is twice that, you'll either rush or run long.
Keep one idea per slide. If you need thirty seconds to talk through a single slide, split it.
Say things the slide doesn't. If your narration repeats the bullets word for word, viewers read ahead of you and tune out.
Record in a quiet room with whatever USB mic you have. Echo hurts more than a cheap mic does.

Option 3: Have the explanation written and drawn for you

Sometimes you don't want a recording of your deck at all. You want a short video that explains what's in it, for someone who missed the meeting, a student revising before an exam, or a team getting onboarded. That's where an AI generator fits.

Rekka works this way. It takes your PowerPoint, reads what's on the slides, writes a narrated explanation of it, and draws that explanation as a hand-drawn video in a whiteboard, chalkboard or crayon style.

The steps:

Open the chat at rekkaai.com/app.
Attach your file. Rekka accepts .pptx, .ppt, .pps and .ppsx. It converts the deck to PDF on its side, then reads it page by page.
Send it, with direction if you want it ("focus on the pricing section", "explain it for a new hire", "make it in Spanish"). Send it with no message and the video covers the whole deck.
The finished mp4 shows up in the chat. Download it, or turn on a public share link.

You can also ask questions about the deck in the chat before making anything. That costs no credits, and it's a quick way to check Rekka has read the slides the way you meant them.

There's more detail on the PowerPoint to video page.

What carries over, and what doesn't

Since this route works differently from PowerPoint's export, it helps to know exactly what it uses.

Rekka reads what's on the slides: text, diagrams, tables, charts and equations. The script is written from those slides, so it uses your deck's own terms and names.

It does not use speaker notes. If the real content of your talk lives in the notes and the slides are mostly titles, the video will only know the titles. In that case, paste the key points from your notes into the chat message along with the file.

Animations and transitions don't carry over either. Rekka isn't replaying your slides. It writes a new explanation and draws it scene by scene, so the video won't look like your deck. If you need your exact slides on screen, use Option 1.

Narration is an AI voice, so it won't sound like you.

Length and cost

One credit makes one video of about 100 seconds. New accounts get one free credit. On the free plan, a deck becomes a single ~100-second chapter that summarises the whole thing. Paid plans can make longer, multi-chapter videos, and Rekka shows you the length and credit cost to confirm before it starts.

You can attach up to 30 slides per message. For a longer deck, export the section you care about as its own file, or tell Rekka which part to focus on.

Output can be landscape, square or portrait, so the same deck can become a video for a course page or a vertical clip for social.

Which option should you use?

If you're the presenter and the video stands in for a talk you'd give anyway, use PowerPoint's own export with recorded narration. It's free and it keeps your slides and your voice.

If you need to switch between apps or show a live demo, screen record.

If you want people to understand what the deck says, and you don't need them watching your slides go by, generate an explainer from it. That's the case Rekka is built for.

Common questions

Can PowerPoint add narration automatically?

PowerPoint's video export uses narration you record yourself. It won't write or speak a script for you.

Does converting a PPT to video keep my speaker notes?

PowerPoint's export doesn't show speaker notes in the video, and Rekka doesn't read them. If your notes hold the real content, record yourself reading them, or paste them into Rekka's chat with the file.

What resolution does PowerPoint export at?

On Windows you can choose from Ultra HD (4K), Full HD (1080p), HD (720p) and Standard (480p). 1080p is plenty for most uses and exports faster than 4K.

Can I turn a PowerPoint into a video in another language?

With Rekka, yes. Ask for the language in your message and the narration comes out in it. With PowerPoint's export, you'd have to record the narration in that language yourself.